Carved in Darkness (29 page)

Riley looked so much like she had at that age—rich auburn hair and wide blue eyes. She’d been beautiful. Too beautiful.

Panic wrapped around her chest, ratcheting tighter and tighter with every breath she tried to take. Her baby sister was too bright. She shined. She beckoned. The man who took her knew about Riley. He’d seen her. It was only a matter time before he took her too.

She looked at Michael. He was watching the twins in their adolescent scramble, a slight smile on his face. His gaze settled on Riley and a shadow flitted across his features—allowed himself a second of sadness before tucking it away. He was thinking about Frankie.

She looked away, unable to stand the grief she saw in his eyes. Not when she’d caused it. Not when she was so close to losing Riley and knowing what it was like to feel that kind of grief settle into her bones and refuse to leave.

A hand reached out and laced its fingers between hers and squeezed. Nickels. She looked up and gave him a quick smile, tried to return the reassuring pressure his hand lent her. She gave up after a few seconds, pulled her hand from his, covered it up by sitting back in her chair and looking away.

“Hey, Mom—what’s up?” Jason said, his questioned muffled by the fact that his head was stuffed in the refrigerator. He emerged with various containers of leftovers and dumped them on the counter.

“Yeah, why are there cops parked across the street?” Riley said. She stood by the back door and took her time hanging the car keys on the hook, studying the cluster of adults in front of her. Where her brother had always been sensitive, careful with others’ feelings, Riley was blunt. She attacked whatever was in front of her, head on. “What’s going on?”

Michael stood, jerked his head toward the open doorway. “That’s our cue, Cop.” He left and Nickels followed.

Sabrina gestured to the pair of vacated chairs. “Sit down.”

Jason carried a plastic container of spaghetti to the table and sat across from her, while Riley took her time. “What’s wrong? What are the cops doing outside?” She leaned back, tipped her chin at the open doorway. “Who are they?”

Sabrina shot a looked at Val. They’d decided to stick as close to the truth as possible. To tell them only what they needed to in order to make them understand that they were in danger. Val gave her a soft shrug. She had the floor.

She told them about Lucy, as gently as she could. About Michael’s sister and that he had proof that linked her death to their grandmother’s. She told them that the only way to make sure they were safe was for her to leave with Michael so that they could find him.

“What does this have to do with us? Why does that guy think you can do anything to help him?” Jason said, the container of spaghetti forgotten on the table in front of him.

“Because I’m a police officer. It’s what I do—catch murderers,” she said, falling back on the pat answer she’d been giving them for the past fourteen years.

This time, Riley wasn’t buying it. “It’s him, isn’t it? The guy who took you. He killed Lucy, didn’t he?”

“Riley—”

The look on her face must’ve told her sister the truth. She shook her head. “He’s going to kill you this time.” Riley looked down at Jason and swallowed hard. “He’s going to kill you, and we’re going to be left alone.”

The words hit her hard. She fought the urge to look away from her little sister’s seething face. “Ri, that’s not going to happen—”

“You can’t say that for sure.” She shook her head.

“Please try to understand—I
have
to go.” She looked at both of them, trying to make them understand. The man who hurt her had made it perfectly clear today that Riley was next. She’d do anything to keep that from happening.

“Why?” Jason said, finally looking up from the tabletop he’d been staring at. Riley had always been the fighter, not Jason—but he was fighting now. “Why don’t we just leave? We’ll take off—”

“He’ll find us. It might take another fifteen years for him to do it, but he will,” she said quietly. “In the meantime, he’ll keep killing. I couldn’t live with myself knowing that.”

Jason looked away, defeated. He didn’t like the answer but seemed to understand. She reached across the table and took his hand. “I love you—”

Riley pinned her with a hard look. “You’re a liar. If you loved us, you’d stay.” She stood and went upstairs, leaving the three of them in heavy silence.

A few hours later, they were ready to go. Michael shouldered her duffle without asking and stood by the back door while she said quiet goodbyes to Jason and Val. Riley had refused to come down, and leaving her without saying goodbye was breaking Sabrina’s heart. Nickels leaned against the kitchen counter, waiting his turn and when she turned to him, he pulled her into his arms, giving her a hard embrace.

“Remember what I said. You’re coming back.” He smoothed a hand over her hair and pulled away just enough to look down at her. He dropped a quick kiss on her mouth before stepping back, letting her go.

She moved through the door, avoiding the look Michael gave her, and pulled the door closed behind them both. They stood on the dark stoop, but neither moved to leave.

“Go back in. Talk to her,” Michael said. He dropped her duffle at his feet and sat on the top step.

No way was she going back in there. “No, let’s just leave. I’ll call her—”

“No you won’t. Go.” He pushed his shoulder into her knee, urging her toward the door. “Tell her that you love her, make promises you don’t have the power to keep. Do whatever you have to do to make it right with her because if you don’t, you’ll regret it. Trust me on that.” He looked up at her. “Go on—I’ll wait here.”

Michael reached up and turned the knob, opened the door, shoved her back into the house, and shut the door behind her. She stood in the deserted kitchen for a few seconds before she mounted the back stairs quietly and let her legs carry her down the hall. She stopped in front of Riley’s bedroom door and hesitated again.
Afraid of a sixteen-year-old-girl …

She knocked softly but got no answer. She told herself to turn around and leave. Why she opened the door and let herself in was a mystery.

The room was dark. Riley curled up in her bed, back toward the door, but she could tell by the set of her shoulders that the girl was tense—listening and awake.

She crossed the room and sat on the bed. “I know you’re awake, and I know you’re angry with me. I’m sorry about that, but I have to go. I have to try and make this right. For Lucy, for you and Jason, for Michael’s sister—” Her heart pounded, so hard and fast her chest hurt. “For me.”

Riley’s shoulders began to shake with the effort to keep her emotions in check. She knew because hers did the same thing when she fought back tears. She thought about Michael’s advice to lie, to say whatever she had to in order to make it right with her sister, and rejected it. She was done lying to the people she loved.

“I can’t promise nothing will happen to me … but I can tell you that everything I have ever done has been because I love you and Jason. The two of you and Val—you’re all that matter to me. And I promise I’ll do anything I have to do to make my way back. I won’t leave you alone. Not if I can help it,” she said quietly, hands clasped in her lap, hands that wanted to grip Riley’s trembling shoulders.

Her words were met with silence. After a few seconds she nodded, shifted herself around to leave. Just as she moved to stand, Riley turned toward her, unshed tears washed in moonlight, turning her blue eyes silver. Riley reached out to grab her hand.

“Will you stay? Just until I fall asleep?”

Sabrina nodded, didn’t trust her voice to stay steady. She stretched out on the bed next to Riley and stroked her hair, watched her eyes grow heavy and close, waited until her breathing grew deep and even before she leaned over and dropped a soft kiss on her daughter’s cheek.

“I love you, Mom,” Riley said on a sigh, moments before she drifted off to sleep.

“I love you too, baby,” she said before she finally stood and left.

FIFTY
-
TWO

T
HEY TREKKED ACROSS THE
backyard in the dark, tossing her duffle and his case over the fence before hauling themselves over. They entered the B&B through the back door, moving silently through the dark house, up the stairs to his room.

Michael shut his door and locked it while she clicked on the bedside lamp and looked around the room. There was a pair of overstuffed armchairs facing a gas fireplace to the right of the full-size bed.

“I’ll take the chair this time.” Sabrina sat down and curled up, resting her face on the back of it to look at him. He sat on the edge of the bed and pulled off his boots. They had to leave for the airport in less than four hours. Just enough time to take a shower, get his gear packed up, and maybe grab a few hours of shut-eye.

“Take the bed. I’m not going to be doing much sleeping, anyway.” He pulled off his shirt and tossed it in the corner. She was looking at him, cataloging every bump and scar, curiosity showed plainly on her face. He was used to it—most people got that look when he stripped down. He pointed to the long, raised scar that ran along his rib cage.

“Knife fight in Grenada.” He pointed to another. “Gun fight in Sincelejo.” He turned and showed her the scattering of scars across his back. “Shrapnel from an IED in Iraq.”

She smiled, held up her hand and showed him a starburst scar on the back of her hand roughly the size of a half-dollar. “Splatter burn from the fryer at the diner.” She turned and lifted her sleeve to expose her bicep. “Took a graze my rookie year, stopping a robbery in progress.” She grinned for a second then went quiet, like she was trying to figure something out. She seemed to make up her mind and stood, crossing the room to stop just in front of him.

She reached for his hand and pulled it to her stomach, under her shirt. She ran the tip of his fingers along her skin and watched his face. He couldn’t look away from her, couldn’t pull away from the smattering of thin, hard scars across her belly.

“He stabbed me fourteen times. They spell out the word
MINE
.” She dropped her hand away from his and eased herself back. She sat on the edge of the bed and pulled a Bersa .380 from the small of her back. She laid it on the nightstand and looked up at him. “I changed my mind; I’ll take the bed.”

Sabrina stretched out on top of the covers and closed her eyes. Her fingers played across her stomach, tracing and retracing her scars.

The bathroom door opened. She didn’t have to look to know he was watching her, deciding if lying down beside her would be a mistake.

She smiled in the dark. “Quit being such a girl and just lie down.”

He laughed before stretching out next to her. They were quiet for a while, both of them staring up at the ceiling, watching shadows play across the pale wash of moonlight.

“We’re done lying to each other, right?” he said without looking at her.

She stared straight ahead but didn’t like the serious tone of his voice. “Yes.” He was here, risking his life to help her after losing so much. She’d tell him the truth. She owed him that.

“What happened the night Tom was attacked?”

She paused for a few seconds before lifting the ring from her chest. She showed it to him. “He used to walk me home from work. By the time we closed the diner it was late, so no one was around to see us together. That last night he gave this to me—asked me to marry him. I said yes. He dropped me off at the front door then circled back around. I snuck him into my room through the window.” She squeezed the ring tight. “He left later than usual—kissed me and ducked out the window like always and just … disappeared.” Michael reached over and took her free hand and held it. The pressure of his hand in hers trapped the words inside her throat, but she forced them out—she needed to say it. Maybe if she did, she could finally let it go.

“I must’ve dozed off because the next thing I remember, someone was knocking on my window. I got up to look and he was just standing there.” She looked at him. “I thought it was Tommy at first. He was wearing Tommy’s jacket but … he had the hood up. I went to the window to let him back in … I’d almost opened it when I noticed the blood. It was all over the place—hard to see in the dark but when I saw it, I knew something was wrong. It wasn’t Tommy outside my window … it was him.”

“You saw the man who took you? In Jessup?” Michael said.

She shook her head. “I—I didn’t see anything. It was dark, his jacket hood was up. He kept his face tilted down—”

He sat up, stared down at her. “Try. Try to remember.”

Michael’s demanding tone opened her eyes. She narrowed them on his face. “I’ve tried—believe me, I’ve tried but there’s nothing there. Nothing
to
remember.” She looked away. “When I realized it wasn’t Tommy, I ran for the door, tried to get out. I was sure he was going to come through the window, but when I looked, he was gone. I thought maybe I’d dreamt it. For just a second I thought everything was fine … then he knocked on the front door and my mother let him in.”

FIFTY
-
THREE